Treatise on Poisons by Sir Robert Christison

OF POISONING WITH LEAD. Poisoning with lead is a subject of great consequence in Medical Police, as well as Medical Jurisprudence. Its preparations have been used for the purpose of intentional poisoning. At the Taunton Assizes in March, 1827, a servant-girl was tried for attempting to administer sugar of lead to her mistress in an arrow-root pudding: and although the charge was not made out, it appeared from the prisoner’s confession that she really had made the attempt. Sugar of lead has also been often taken by accident. In relation to medical police lead is a subject of great importance. This metal is used in so many forms, and in so many of the arts, and its effects when gradually introduced into the body are so slow and insidious, that instances of its deleterious operation are frequently met with. Such accidents, indeed, are less common now, than they used to be before the late improvements in chemistry. But they are still sufficiently frequent to render it necessary for the toxicologist to investigate the properties of lead attentively. SECTION I.—_Of the Chemical History and Tests for the Preparations of Lead._ The physical characters of lead in its metallic state are familiar to every one. It is easily known by the dull bluish-gray colour it assumes when exposed some time to the air, by the brilliant bluish-gray colour of a fresh surface, and by the facility with which it may be cut. The compounds which require particular notice are four in number, litharge, red lead, white lead, sugar of lead, and Goulard’s extract. The first three are very much used by house-painters and glaziers, the last two are extensively employed in surgery, and the sugar of lead is also used in many of the arts.